Monday, June 02, 2008

Monday's Notes

Monday's Notes

Slipped behind the curve yesterday; anyone who reads this site already knows what happened Saturday in DC, and with a lousy weather forecast the rest of the week (nonstop rain till Friday), I devoted Sunday to the Smallest Farm. Most of the tomatoes have grown out of the top of their milk jug "hats," and I taught my 8 year old how to pinch the unproductive suckers. There actually IS corn growing, if you pull enough weeds away to see. But my peas, planted the last week of March, aren't blooming yet.

At Hillary stronghold MyDD, Jerome Armstrong gnashes his teeth at the committee result, but gets some blowback (leading with The Meme) even on his own site. I'm seeing a trend of HRC supporters getting to the acceptance stage of grieving, like this one.

Also at MyDD, Mitchell A makes a great point that from Clinton's perspective:

The problem with the DNC's Michigan decision is that it undermines the plausibility of counting Michigan's votes in a popular vote total. According to the DNC, giving Obama the "uncommitted" votes is an inadequate solution to the Michigan problem. No one knows for sure how the vote would have gone. So it simply took the request of the Clinton Camp, and the request of the Obama Camp, and split the difference, awarding Obama four "additional" delegates. This is meant to make a statement. It shows that the state's popular vote is not to be construed as decisive or legitimate, for the delegate count does not match the "popular vote" (which in fact is non-existent since Obama wasn't on the ballot). The compromise was one over delegates, and the way that the delegates were handled signaled that Michigan's popular vote should not be counted.

The outrage from the Clinton Camp is real, but to be more exact, it is really fury at the DNC for undermining its case about the popular vote. It is not clear how she wants to use the latter at this point, but whether it is for posterity, for the VP slot, or for her next run for the presidency, the popular vote total remains very important to the Clintons. The problem, however, is obvious. By insisting on this false metric, they are undermining Obama. They are making it appear that she somehow won the election, as did Gore, and then had it taken away from her by an unfair system. But the analogy to Florida in 2000 is specious.

Indeed, just last night Hillary was adding Puerto Rico votes, irrelevant in a general election, to her "majority."

Michigan (Obama, Edwards, Biden, and Richardson were not on the ballot)Uncommitted: 238,168Clinton: 328,309

Note the big Hillary wins in territories. To be more complete, you could break it out by open vs. closed primaries, but you get the idea.

A Kos diary in a similar vein excludes territories, estimates caucuses, and comes up with :

The UK's Telegraph: "Senior figures in the Obama camp have told Democrat colleagues that the offer to Mrs Clinton of a cabinet post as health secretary or to steer new legislation through the Senate will be a central element of their peace overtures to the New York senator." HHS? Naah. You can get FIRED from a cabinet post. I still say the role model is Super Senator, post-1980 Ted Kennedy...